yeah he could've named it the drinking horn
by Windswift
Summary: Coffee shop AU! Basically a shameless excuse for pre-Hiccstrid bantering and silliness and movie 2 dynamics. Hiccup is never going to cover a morning shift at Vikings Coffee for his uncle ever again.


Disclaimer: I don't own _How To Train Your Dragon_

Birthday fic for Katia-chan! This is partly her fault. The original fault is probably all mine though.

_**yeah he could've named it the drinking horn**_

"Alright," Hiccup drawls, "here we are, one small coffee _black-like-your-soul_ which I'm going to assume just means black, to go, for—" He pauses to squint at the name he scribbled on the cup in black marker not three minutes ago. Wow. Maybe his uncle's right about his handwriting, not that he'll ever admit it to the man. Hiccup sets the cup down and pushes it across the counter. "..._Milady_."

Milady purses her lips to keep a straight face as she nods and takes her coffee.

Hiccup of five years ago would've stuttered over the syllables, face red enough to nearly drown out his freckles, and he'd probably have knocked the coffee over for good measure. Heck, the Hiccup of five years ago—flushed with insecurity and various hormones—would've leaned one elbow on the counter with desperate casualness the moment she walked in the shop door, all dark sweatpants and fitted athletic t-shirt and a loose braid curled over one shoulder, little sweat-soaked tendrils of blond hair framing her round face.

He'd have grinned, one corner of his mouth pulling farther than the other just like in every terrible family portrait. Grinned like a dying man and told himself: You've got this, Haddock. Yeah. Just play it cool. _Hi, uh, hi, hey, hi there, er, I see that you work out! That's great, yeah, I also like to hit the gym, you know, can't stop working on all this... this._

Smooth.

Current Hiccup, though, is twenty, and his hormones rage a bit less rampantly these days. In fact he's pretty sure they're still asleep in his bed, where he'd rather like the rest of him to be.

Besides, he's already committed to a date with his physics homework, a day-old bagel from the pastry case, and a thermos of cheap coffee he brought from home.

"You know, I'm pretty sure Vikings didn't even _have_ coffee."

Holy sh—! Hiccup jerks back, instinctively—_has she just been standing there the entire time what the hell_—and flings his mechanical pencil to the floor with a clatter that's definitely broken the lead. His physics notebook promptly flops after it in a rustle of pages. Nice.

She's still standing there at the counter, holding her popped-off to-go lid in one hand and steaming cup of coffee in the other. She raises her eyebrows at him and makes a show of blowing on her drink.

"Yeah, well, if they had coffee they would've loved it," Hiccup shoots back, bending down to retrieve his homework. He shakes the notebook twice, flips it back to the right page, and brushes the dirt off it. Someone did a shit job of sweeping the floor last night.

"And it's my dad you want to take that up with," he adds. "He's the one with the terrible naming sense."

He points to his right without looking, where there's a photo of Stoick Haddock glowering proudly on the wall alongside a framed newspaper article from the grand opening of Vikings Coffee. And—now get this—and a little plaque denoting him as _business owner_ wasn't good enough for his dad, oh no, the man had to have one that says _Chief_...

"...Stoick?"

"Uh, yeah. It runs in the family. The bad names."

"Hm." She bumps her hip against the counter, folding her arms. Come on, really? _Milady_ needs to take her to-go coffee and actually _go_. Or at least pick a table. Facing away from him. Hiccup didn't roll out of bed and shamble into the shower with enough time to spare for breakfast this morning, _bless_ the shop's pastry case, and it's unprofessional to sneak bites of his stale blueberry bagel with her standing _right there_ watching him.

After a moment she admits, "Gotta hand it to him, at least he can pull off the historically-inaccurate horned helmet look."

Hiccup can feel the eyes turning to him. He can _hear_ them in her silence. Screw professionalism, he grabs the bagel and shoves it in his mouth, picking up his pencil in his left hand so he can't possibly reach up to fidget with the stupid, _stupid_ helmets his dad makes them all wear. Hiccup definitely also does _not_ rub his unimpressively scruffy chin either.

"Look," he says, when he's swallowed enough to talk, because it's really unnerving the way she just keeps standing there at the counter while he's trying to do his homework on the cramped little counter space behind the register in peace, "is there something else you need?"

"Nope." She sets her coffee on the counter, then reaches into her pocket to pull out her phone. She picks at her braid with her free hand while she scrolls through the messages. "You're not the guy I usually see working here. Are you new?"

He snorts, because it's too early to be charming. "Favor to my dad. I usually do a couple afternoons a week." Hiccup shrugs his shoulders and jots down an equation. She doesn't seem to be much good at picking up hints.

"Your dad," she repeats. He nods, punching numbers into his calculator. "The one with the terrible taste in names?"

"That's him."

"Wait, so your name is _actually_ Hiccup?"

He reaches up, before he can think to stop himself, to curl his fingers over the sticker on the front of his apron, the big white name tag that he scrawled _Hiccup_ on in his worst handwriting. The sticker his dad makes him use because he 'forgot' his name badge at home yet again, because there's no way he's pinning something that official on, at least the sticker makes _Hiccup_ look like some coworker's inside joke.

"Look, I don't have to take this from someone named _Milady_—" he counters.

"Astrid."

He closes his mouth, and opens it again, and doesn't remember exactly where he was at in his indignation, and asks, "What?"

She rolls her eyes, softening the expression with a grin, and reaches over to snap the lid back on her coffee. "Astrid," she says. "My name's Astrid, duh. I just made you write Milady because it's funny."

"Oh," he says. "Ha ha."

Hiccup takes another bite of his bagel and leans back over his notebook, shooting her suspicious glances as she gathers up her to-go cup at last.

"So..." she says. "You work afternoons, huh?"

"Yeah," says Hiccup. "No. Maybe—are you _plotting_ something?" He manages to get his suspicious glower even squintier.

Astrid rolls her eyes again. Then she reaches across the counter and bumps her fist against his shoulder. "That's for thinking my soul's as black as a strong cup of coffee."

Hiccup would dearly like someone to look injured and aggrieved and offended to, but there's only Astrid in the coffee shop, Astrid who shouldn't even bother with the pretense of keeping a straight face because her grin keeps spilling out all around it, Astrid who's clearly not apologetic or ashamed _at all_ of her inability to keep her hands to herself like a kindergartener.

She takes a sip of her coffee, and waves, and leaves.

Man, his dad can bother somebody _else_ for a favor next time. Hiccup's not getting paid anywhere near enough to drag his butt out of bed for another early-morning shift with these crazy people.


End file.
